


i wanna kiss your silhouette

by firelordazulas



Category: Gone Girl (2014), Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Genre: F/F, Soulmates AU, soulmarks colour au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8173996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelordazulas/pseuds/firelordazulas
Summary: When you meet Rhonda Boney you have had your heart broken a million times by 1000 different shades of women. You think you’ve seen every colour the world has to give, think the past scars have left you with a bitter hatred of the entire fallacy of soulmarks. Until she nudges you with her shoulder, accompanied by a wry smirk behind that ubiquitous large cup of coffee. Inexplicably, you of the crude jokes and the general unflappable nature, blush like you haven’t since middle school. After, you think you know that she’s left her mark on you. Certainly you remember her well, and for more than her treatment of your brother; you remember the curve of her mouth, the gun on her hip, the movement of her hands.





	

You have a whole host of colours over your chest and arms - your mother, who left the warm burnt orange along your stomach, had always said that you fell in love much too easily. There were a host of overlapping colours on your hands, when you’d been young and foolish and shaken hands with anyone who had asked. Your arms and shoulders were streaked with colour from casual brushes with strangers. Nick’s mark, a deep navy blue, was still the brightest - a sweep of colour across your cheek, where his childhood fist had absentmindedly scraped your face. They’d always said that as infants the two of you had no comprehension of personal space, of where one of you ended and the other began, and were constantly running into each other. The pastel pink that Amy left is just another of the riot of colour in the kaleidoscope that creates the landscape of your hands, and it’s just another thing that she’d resented - not that you’d left any sort of mark on her of course.

But that was the thing about Amy. She had your brother’s mark, she had her parents, she had a few childhood friends, but that was it. For you and Nick, easygoing, friendly Missourians, that was practically unheard of. The way that she walled herself off from others, held everything (but especially her physical presence) away from those that might wish to get to know her was foreign and strange to the both of you. How Nick had fallen in love with her, you’d never understood. His mark was bright on her lips, from the famed story of wiping flour from her lips in the early hours of morning and you think privately that he was more in love with the shape of himself on her.

When you meet Rhonda Boney you have had your heart broken a million times by 1000 different shades of women. You think you’ve seen every colour the world has to give, think the past scars have left you with a bitter hatred of the entire fallacy of soulmarks. Until she nudges you with her shoulder, accompanied by a wry smirk behind that ubiquitous large cup of coffee. Inexplicably, you of the crude jokes and the general unflappable nature, blush like you haven’t since middle school. After, you think you know that she’s left her mark on you. Certainly you remember her well, and for more than her treatment of your brother; you remember the curve of her mouth, the gun on her hip, the movement of her hands.

It’s with trembling hands that you remove your shirt that night. The mark is large and even and bright, as bright as Nick’s in a way that makes you trace a hand through the middle of it, as if it’s a lake - the cool, deep blue is a lot lighter than his, but just as heavy. 

The two of you revolve around each other without words. You think there is a tacit agreement that she knows that you know you both have marks, but neither of you are free to talk about it while the investigation continues.

 

Rhonda is used to leaving marks and only receiving the lightest of brushes. She can always tell how important a case is by the marks she leaves on those involved; on Nick Dunne she leaves two deep streaks of her cool blue and receives only a dusting of his. Amy never touches Rhonda, and she’s glad of it; she thinks Amy’s pastel pink is as deceptively toxic as the bitch herself.

Rhonda doesn’t touch Margo Dunne until the very end of the investigation, until Nick’s been exonerated and it feels like they’re all part of some strange conspiracy club. They only brush shoulders. Rhonda watches Margo’s face, sees how she refuses to look at her, the heat that spreads through her cheeks, and resigns herself to another light splash of colour while Margo Dunne is left with a lake of unrequited maybes. She wraps her arms protectively around her shoulders, watches Margo do the same, and the two of them finish out that strange club meeting without once looking each other in the eyes. 

When Rhonda returns home she tries to force herself to take her time. She tries to tell herself that there won’t be a mark anyway, that there’s no need to feel like a child on Christmas morning as she unwraps her shoulder, but her heart is still crawling up her throat in excitement, her pulse pounding in her ears. 

It’s there. It’s there, and it’s deep, and it looks like the sky when the sun is just beginning to creep up on those mornings Rhonda’s worked straight through the night, when the coffee is buzzing quietly in the back of her brain and she’s hopefully had a breakthrough with her case and everything tastes bitter but fresh in the back of her throat. She wonders how she’s ever going to watch a sunrise without thinking of her. She rubs her thumb through the middle of the deep, almost black blue and thinks of Margo Dunne, of what it would be like to have even a conversation that lasted longer than a spiteful barb or two. She wonders why of all the woman it could have been, it had to be one that had more layers than a particularly spiteful onion, had to be one that she’d had arrested once upon a time. 

 

The mark doesn’t make Rhonda fall instantly in love or any other such fairytale. In fact, she actively avoids the woman for the first few months, attempts to never consider her or her life and the indelible mark that catches Rhonda’s eye every time she moves her arm just so. Eventually, she has no option but to give in. It feels childish, almost, to continue ignoring the pull to see her, to avoid a chance at what could be friendship or happiness or even just a valuable 5 minutes. Visiting The Bar seems like the obvious choice. The thin white shirt she wears is more a dare than anything else - she remembers the cocksure curve of Margo Dunne’s smirk, remembers the mostly light colours that absolutely cover the woman, and wants to challenge her to make this into something or nothing. 

 

It’s not until long after, a month or three, that Rhonda finally steps into The Bar. By then you’ve resigned yourself to thinking that she doesn’t have a mark at all, that she’s left this giant literal mark on your life and you’ve not even painted the lightest of brush strokes. You’re drying glasses, like always, when she strides in still in her suit, gun still strapped to her belt. Honest to God, you almost drop the glass you’re holding as she casually sits on a bar stool right in front of you. You’re not sure what quality it is of hers that causes you to turn entirely to jelly. Her gaze flickers to your upper arm - what a bad day to wear a short sleeved tshirt. Until she shrugs her jacket off and purposefully rolls up both sleeves; you can see your black-blue colour through the thin fabric of her white shirt. 

“Vodka and coke, please.”

“Single or double?”

“Make it a double; don’t want to stay for too long.”

Your hands shake as you go through the usual motions of pouring a drink. It’s something you’ve done thousands of times before; Boney has surprisingly conventional taste - you’d always imagined her drinking whiskey, neat, if you’d stopped to think about, which you’re still pretending you never have. 

“So, how was work?” It’s odd falling back on conventional small talk, as if you’re old friends who’ve just come together after a long time apart. 

“It’s been okay, slow mostly. Nothing nearly as serious as your brother’s whole thing. How is Amy, by the way?”

“Oh, she’s well I’m pretty sure. I don’t know, she doesn’t tend to bother with me, and Nick’s been so busy with the baby coming and everything...”

The conversation trails off into silence. You pour yourself some fancy bourbon. 

“It’s a crying shame that she’s our link to each other. In different circumstances...” Boney trails off, stirring her drink with her straw but still looking at you intensely.

“I don’t know, it’s probably better you’ve already been introduced to my less than picturesque family. And how else would we have met? You might have stumbled into the bar one day, become just another of many marks that cover my hands.”

“I’d have become just another one of your girls.”

“How do you know that I have girls? I’ll have you know that every girl I’ve ever dated has broken my heart, not the other way round.”

“Oh yeah? And it wasn’t because of your emotional walls or anything?”

You’d blushed again, and then cursed yourself. Your cheeks had been just waiting for an excuse to visibly heat since you’d blundered your way into a conversation. “Ha, no, of course not. It was my cat allergy. Lesbians hate that.”

“I hate cats.”

“Oh, promising.” You’d looked down sheepishly - this was the closest the two of you had come to admitting that you maybe wanted to try something, maybe wanted this to be more.

Boney drained her drink and shrugged her suit jacket back on. She dropped her card on the bar, “Call me sometime,” and left with one last crooked grin.

You’d pocketed the card quickly, furtively, after watching her all the way out the door.

 

You don’t call her. You feel nervous and sweaty handed, unable to make a decision even as you ache to see her again. This sensation is familiar but you thought at your age you were no longer able to feel it. You know that Boney is about 10 years older than you and you think that maybe it’s her age that inspires this nervous, foolish devotion to her and the mark she’d bound you with. And, of course, there’s the fact that she’s blindingly, ridiculously attractive, that you desperately want to kiss along the harsh curve of her jaw, want to dig your hands deep into her hair, want to gasp along her fluttering pulse. 

Still, you don’t call her. The sight of your colour on her skin has rendered you unable, made you mute, powerless to vocalise the need for something more than just her skin on yours; you want everything, want all and any of the bits of her she might be willing to give you, but this vulnerability… It isn’t what you do. You fall in love, again and again and again, but only ever with the scent of a woman’s skin. 

Eventually, Rhonda appears just as you’re opening The Bar for the morning, gun firmly on her hip and large cup of coffee in her hand. You stop attempting to get the old, slightly rusted lock open in favour of just looking at her, a million apologies and shitty explanations running through your head. She crowds you against the door with mostly just her gaze, the wood cold against your back, her body hot against you.

“You didn’t call.”

You’ve never particularly noticed how much taller than you she is, but now it’s all you can think about as you gaze up into the cold blue of her eyes, as your gaze lingers on the contrasting softness of her lips compared to the harsh curve of her jaw. You don’t answer her, although you think she knows that you’re obsessed with the lines of her face, with the wrinkles by her eyes, that you want to kiss her more than you’ve ever wanted most things. It’s overwhelming, and too much, and you can almost smell more than just her perfume, can almost smell the base scent of her, and you still don’t speak as you shoulder past her to get out from all of that. 

“Well? Margo?”

“Look, I don’t - I don’t know what you want. I can’t - I just -,” and you push her back with a hand against her sternum, pin her against the door in a way that is anything but soft, and chase after her.

Your fingers dig into the ridges of her collarbones as you finally kiss her. She feels warm but sharp, her hands digging into your waist, and it’s messy and bruising but everything that you’d be waiting for. Rhonda’s hands slip under your tshirt, span the width of your stomach, slide up your ribs, and just before this can get too pornographic you manage to pull away long enough to unlock the door, dragging her inside and behind the counter with you.

 

You’re just breathing into her neck, the two of you only just out of sight of the large windows that dominate the bar, when she quietly does up her blouse, her jeans, buckles her belt. She’s going to leave, you know she is, know it just as well as you now know the scent of her bare skin, her hair, even her clothes. Without a word you spin away from her to sort your own clothes out, and before you can even turn back you hear the tinkle of the bell, know that she’s gone probably forever. You try to convince yourself it’s for the best. 

 

Suddenly, you’re seeing her everywhere. You go into Dunkin’ Donuts, firmly convincing yourself that it doesn’t remind you of her, and she’s there with her immaculate fucking ponytail and cop posture. You remember the feel of her hair in your greedy hands, how it had looked after, when it was dishevelled and falling out the neat elastic band. You tell yourself to stop being ridiculous and join the line behind her. Predictably, you meet each other's gaze, exchanging ridiculously stand-offish nods. 

Like an idiot, you can’t stop yourself from making a joke. “So, come here often?”

“Sometimes. You?”

“Oh, I’ve been known to pick up a bear claw here and there. Let me guess, you come here for the fuck off massive coffee, right?”

“Fuck off massive coffee is my favourite type.”

“I guess you don’t have to worry about not calling it the next day - ah, shit, is it too soon.”

“No, no, that’s fair, although maybe you should consider who’s not calling who when you make those sorts of comments.” And she’d fucking smirked at you before sauntering out the shop.

You honestly didn’t mean to follow her, but then you’re pushing her back against her car to kiss her desperately as her partner watches from the car. Amazingly, she kisses you back just as aggressively, her hands once again slipping under your t-shirt, until she firmly grasps your waist, shoving you back. “Not here, I’m still on my shift - call me later?”

 

Predictably, you chickened out of calling her. 

 

The two of you are unconsciously spinning closer to each others orbits, choosing bars and shops and changing daily routines in the hope of catching a glimpse. You are constantly seeking the sight of her jaw in a crowd, eyes desperately searching for her immaculate posture, for that certain way she tilts her head when she doesn’t believe a word someone’s saying. It takes 4 more such meetings, where you’d made little caustic comments and she’d rolled her eyes until you finally kissed her, for her to finally give up and just call you first.

“I’m bored of us avoiding each other. What are we doing? What do you want us to do?”

She couldn’t see you, but you’d still flushed to the roots of your hair. “I - well, I want to see you, I guess, I mean - I just don’t know what I can offer you, I’m not exactly the best at commitment -”

“So, predictably, you’re scared of relationships. Why couldn’t you just have told me that?”

“Well - I don’t -”

“Are you at home or at The Bar?”

“At home, but it’s half 12 in the morning, I’m wearing my pyjamas -”

“I’m coming over.”

And she’d hung up on you, like the dick she was. 

 

As soon as the front door was closed behind her you’d been reaching for her, placing your thumb in that collarbone groove you’d fallen in love with, kissing the sense out of her.

“No, no, wait, we need to talk -”

“Do we? I’m not sure we really do, I mean, talking isn’t nearly as fun -”

“Margo. What are you to me? What do you want this to be, your best case scenario?”

You’d sighed deeply, forehead dropping to the curve of her neck and shoulder, your cheeks already heating. “I don’t know? I think - well, I think I want to, this is going to sound so sappy, okay right, I think I want to wake up with you. And I think I want you to borrow my pyjamas, and I think I want you to have a toothbrush on my sink, and I think I want to have long rambling conversations with you in the middle of the night, and I think I want you to complain about my coffee maker and - and - yeah. Yeah.”

Boney had let a long breath of what you hoped was relief. “Okay, that I can work with.” You felt her press a kiss to your hair, finally wrapping her arms around you, thumb stroking the nape of your neck in a way that promised a whole host of things. “How about, we order some shitty take out and sit on the sofa with a shit film and we don’t do anything until we’ve had at least a few reasonable conversations to see if this can actually be a viable thing?”

“Or, we could continue making out, and then we can get take out after and eat it in bed. That sounds like a much more appealing proposition to me.”

“Are you always going to use sex as a distraction technique?”

“Are you ever going to stop wearing your gun literally everywhere and also these shirts? Because if not, I can’t be blamed for my actions.”

You’d smirked up at her and she’d smiled as she’d groaned in defeat. When you kissed her this time it was so gentle, as if she was made of glass, as if she was the most precious thing your hands had ever touched as they skipped down the line of her throat, just resting there. Then, you’d rested your forehead against hers in such a cliché, sickeningly romantic way you’d kind of wanted to punch yourself, or you would have if you weren’t having such a good time just breathing the air as her. 

She’d whispered into that space, “I want all those things too,” and you’d valiantly tried to stop your eyes from tearing up, rubbing your nose against hers instead in a way that’d made you both laugh, sort of wetly.

“I’m going to need to buy some spare toothbrushes.”

You’d pulled back just slightly so you could see Rhonda smile, the one where you could see most of her teeth, where it was crooked and kind of sharp but so genuine, and thought that maybe sharing your whole life wasn’t so bad. Maybe she was worth the worry and the complications. Maybe the warmth that started in your chest and suffused your whole body was worth it.

You’d giggled and she’d chuckled and it’d felt like maybe you were meant to be here. Maybe. Just maybe. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from palace - hayley kiyoko. the citrine ep saved me personally 
> 
> also im hella gay 4 kim dickens if u cant tell


End file.
